Mumbai...

And it’s monsoon! Officially, the rain was supposed to have stopped several days ago, but in practice there are intermittent downpours – which, in fact, yesterday were almost constant and dramatic, such that the normal view across the lake to the towers of South Mumbai was completely lost for much of the time in sheets of rain. The monsoon season is four months long, and the combination of damp air with tropical heat means that even in the marbled opulence of luxury hotels there’s a slight undertone of mould and rotting fabric that everybody politely ignores.

When I arrived, late on Sunday night, the rain actually held off for the duration of my slow journey from airport to hotel – in a local taxi, the greasy interior of which gave significant pause for thought – and we drove through jubilant crowds celebrating the last day of the festival of Ganesh, the day when all of the images had been immersed in lakes and in the sea, and even at midnight the streets were thronged with people and music and parties, and many many images of the elephant god himself. Vibrant, and noisy, and chaotic, and all very splendid.

By daylight, the next morning, crossing town in order to attend a meeting in a different part of the city, the extent of shanty-town living was evident, and as is so often the case in developing countries, the experience for the foreigner is of air-conditioned luxurious ghettos, with liveried staff and sitar players, and flower-strewn marble pools….whilst the poverty and the real-world experience is only viewed fleetingly and at a distance, through hermetically sealed car windows..

------

Hardly surprisingly, the food is excellent…with a subtlety and delicacy in the spicing which is often missing in Indian food back in London. The names of the dishes are recognizably the same as those at home – once you’ve navigated the phonetic spellings, that is – but the standard is generally comparable with the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten in the West. On Monday, we found ourselves at one of Powai’s best restaurants, called ‘Saffron Spice’ – obviously popular with middle class locals, and with only a smattering of other foreigners (probably all recommended by the concierge at our hotel, we concluded). The dishes were light and well-cooked, with a freshness that isn’t usual in Indian food in the UK…..and I was even able to order Chicken Tikka Masala, which I hadn’t expected. I’ve always understood that it was invented in somewhere like Rotherham several decades ago, and it was significantly tongue-in-cheek that I looked for it on the restaurant menu. It was there. It arrived. It was good. And I still have my suspicions that it hails from Yorkshire!

But the best food is the ‘small’ food – the mint flavoured broken crisps served with drinks, and the myriad anonymous offerings brought round at banquets: fried potato balls, pieces of fish or meat to be skewered and dunked in spicy sauces; and more different kinds of kebab than it is possible to remember. Reminiscent of the delicacies of an Ottoman pasha, these things have more the whiff of authenticity about them than plates piled high with rice and naan-bread and various kinds of ‘stew’.

Indians seem uncomfortable with silence, and at all times of day the reception areas in the hotel are ‘busy’ with noise of some kind or another: in the mornings, a boy sits cross-legged on the floor of the lobby and makes plinky-plink noises by hitting a stick against different-sized porcelain bowls filled with coloured water (a deeply unmusical effect which very rapidly becomes irritating rather than soothing); later on, a different youth works a sitar; and in the evenings, the space is filled with the syrupy tones of an improbably hennaed chap at the grand piano in the bar, mellifluously churning out the hackneyed romantic gush that’s been doing the global rounds for ever.

More evocative of the true spirit of the place, though, was the ten minutes or so I spent in the morning – between rain showers – in a pavilion down at the edge of the lake. Looking out across the expanse, where the lush marshy vegetation gradually gave way to the flat grey waters of the lake itself, and then to the city and the distant hills beyond, the view was striking in its desolate beauty. Timeless, and brooding. Kites wheeled above the water, dipping and soaring, while the distant sound of sitar playing could be heard from across the rain-soaked lawns behind me.

I can understand how people get hooked on this place…

Recipe: Parsnips, with Walnuts and Sherry

This is definitely a dish for the cooler months...which seems highly appropriate since today it's grey and raining, and the temperature has dropped ten degrees in as many hours! The combination of puréed parsnips with a light topping of walnuts is unexpectedly good, and the indefinable edge provided by a slug of sherry takes this dish to another level. I defy anybody to be able to identify the ingredient, but they'll certainly know there's something there... Originally, I came across this recipe in an old book that had been passed on to me, and the implication was that it was a preparation method of some age. In fact, the alcohol of choice in that version was madeira rather than sherry (I substituted sherry, on the basis that I always have some on the go, so it was easier), and for me madeira always has about it the hint of a victorian cathedral close...so the suggestion of age might indeed be correct.

Excellent with any roast meat, the last stage in cooking the parsnips also fits with this combination, as the finished dish can just go into the oven for the last twenty minutes of roasting time, enough to heat the parsnips through and to brown the walnuts.

For four.

Ingredients: 4 large-ish Parsnips; 4 fl oz Cream; 2 fl oz medium Sherry; half a teaspoon of ground Nutmeg; Salt & Pepper, to taste; 2 oz Butter; 2 oz Walnut pieces.

Method:

1. Peel the Parsnips and cut into pieces; steam for twenty minutes or so, until tender (you could equally cook them in water, I suppose, if you don't have a steamer). Leave to cool for ten minutes or so.

2. Once cool enough to handle, process the cooked Parsnips along with all of the other ingredients apart from the Walnut pieces. Turn out into a greased ovenproof dish, and level the surface.

3. Sprinkle the Walnut pieces evenly over the surface of the Parsnip purée, and place into the lower part of a hot oven for fifteen to twenty minutes. (The Walnut pieces should each be no larger than a pine-nut - if they're larger, before sprinkling them, break them up by crushing gently between your hands.)

Serve.

The REAL McCoy...

Kiev. On being banished there for a couple of days last week, my expectations weren't high, having been exposed recently to other capital cities from the erstwhile eastern bloc. In my experience, the aesthetic of these places ranges from the drab dreariness of Moscow and Belgrade, to the Disney-esque spicky-span perkiness of Riga. Not a great recommendation at either end of the spectrum.

And so, it came as a pleasant surprise to find a charming and cosmopolitan city, with tree-lined avenues, cobbled streets and elegant squares. Driving in from the airport, the gilded domes of St Michael's Cathedral were visible from way off in the distance, glinting in the afternoon sun, dominating the old town, and looking down to the Dnieper which flowed densely past at the foot of the hill. And as my taxi began to negotiate the streets of the city itself, the vistas were of neo-classical facades and a sense more of Vienna than of Nishny-Novgorod.

My personal mission whilst there was to track down the real Chicken Kiev...not least to confirm to myself that it really exists, and it isn't merely a construct from King's Road Bistros in the sixties.

On the first evening I was comprehensively thwarted. On asking in the hotel for a restaurant that was both scenic and traditional, we ended up literally on the Dnieper, in a heavily built wooden boat, the interior of which had been transformed to resemble the inside of a woodland dacha - complete with tiled stove and log-lined walls. It might have been scenic to look at, but not to look from, and the view through the window was of the concrete supports of the motorway bridge that led over to the opposite bank of the river. At least all our fellow diners were reassuringly local, as the kitsch quality of the setup immediately and disconcertingly screamed 'tourist'!

Tatyana, our dirndl-clad waitress, conveyed as much by facial expressions as by dint of her very broken english that she would not recommend Ukrainian wine, and steered us instead towards a white georgian vintage, that at first gasp took the enamel off the teeth, but - as is generally the case - by the second glass had settled down to being perfectly drinkable. And to go with it, we ended up having vast bowls of soup, sunk within which were large and unexpected chunks of flora and fauna, which were followed by a rich variety of dumplings, stuffed variously with liver, and cabbage, and potato, and 'meat'...all accompanied by bowls of sour cream and a towering pile of fried potato cakes. It was all sticks-to-tiny-ribs stuff, and by the end of the second course we were forced to concede defeat, and wave away Tatyana's suggestions that we move on to yet more dumplings - filled with cherries this time - for dessert. Of Chicken Kiev, or anything even remotely resembling it, there had been no sign whatsever on the menu - but it was certainly with a sense that we could face anything that the frozen wastes of the steppe could throw at us that we made our way outside ...to our waiting taxi.

And on the following evening...success! As a welcome relief from a day of windowless, air-conditioned meeting rooms, we emerged into evening sunshine and the calm at the end of what had obviously been a glorious day. Making our way along the quiet streets that led behind the cathedral compound, we took the steep cobbled route down past St Andrew's Church - in the baroque gloom of which the guardians were putting up heavy wooden shutters and shooing the faithful out - and past the corner house where Bolgakov famously wrote The Master and Margerita. The waning evening sunlight was luminous, and we looked out and down over the city at twilight, as it gradually became a sea of twinkling illumination. Yuriy, our guide, both confirmed the existence of Chicken Kiev, and thought long and hard about where we should go to get a 'good' one.

We ended up, as the result of his serious contemplation, at a place called The Corsair, and decided to sit outside, since it was still - we mistakenly thought - just about early enough in the year still to do so. More georgian wine - our waitress steered us firmly away from the Azerbaijani bottle we'd thought looked interesting - and in fact a pro-georgian theme within Kiev began to emerge...which, given the political environment, was hardly surprising.

Pickled vegetables, yet more dumplings, and finally, Chicken Kiev! Looking like nothing so much as an enormous scotch egg... suspiciously perfectly formed, it looked more like the product of a manufacturing process than the loving care of a babuschka in the kitchen. And I'm afraid that was pretty much how it tasted, as well. 'Bland' is probably the most polite word that springs to mind, and the dish certainly lacked the garlic-and-lemon kick that I associate with a properly made Chicken Kiev back at home. In fact, probably the most babuschka-like element of the evening was the sight of my companion ('The blonde' as A.A.Gill would probably have called her, and in this instance would probably have been thumped for his pains) swaddled in acres of blanket that had been thoughtfully provided by our waitress in order to keep out the cold; although the day had been hot and sunny, Ukraine in the first week in September is certainly not the french riviera! And the result of the Chicken Kiev hunt? Well, I was left still not entirely convinced of its truly ukrainian provenance, and cynically suspected that in fact what we were served had been shipped in in bulk from somewhere else, and in fact had been made in a Brake Bros factory!

Next week, by chance, I'm in Mumbai. Maybe I should see how I get on there in search of the real Chicken Tikka Masala!

Tonight's dinner:

Risotto of Funghi Porcini

Plaice Meuniere with Mange-touts.

Raspberry Soufflés

Recipe: Tomato & Blue Cheese Tart

This is the last of the recipes from this year's Masterchef Weekend, back in July. Yes, I know...but somehow I just haven't got round to it. This was Jennie's first-course offering, and it was truly delicious. I'll reproduce it here exactly as she provided it to me - but in fact, before having actually read the recipe, I did make a version of it as a canapé a couple of weeks after the weekend, and my simplified version worked just as well as the 'official' one...but took significantly less time..

For Four.

Ingredients: 750g ripe vine-ripened Tomatoes; Salt & Pepper; 450g Puff Pastry; 100g Blue Cheese (e.g. Gorgonzola Piccante); 1 tsp fresh Thyme; 1 tbs Olive Oil; handful of Rocket leaves.

Method:

1. Thinly slice Tomatoes. Place them on a greased baking tray or a silpat sheet, add seasoning, and bake for ten minutes in a 250 degree C oven, then reduce the temperature to 150 degree C and bake for a further hour. Remove and set aside.

2. Roll out the Pastry, to make four 10cm squares of pastry, and bake ten minutes in a 200 degree C oven, then carefully turn them over and bake for a further five minutes.

3. Arrange the slices of Tomato over the Pastry squares, leaving a 1cm border around the edge of each square; crumble the Cheese over the top and sprinkle the Thyme and Oil over the Tomatoes, then return to the oven for five minutes until the Cheese has melted.

4. Before serving, garnish with chopped Rocket, and a final drizzle of Olive Oil.

For canapés, I used some leftover shortcrust pastry, rolled thin and cut into 2c m squares; on each one, after baking them, I put a basil leaf, then a single slice of cherry tomato (baked in slices for twenty minutes at 180 degrees C), topped with a little Blue Cheese and some dried Oregano, then back into the oven until the Cheese had melted, and served immediately with a glass of prosecco.

Mornings in August....

This week, it has been almost too hot even to give any thought to food...and the only way to make sense of the day, before being pole-axed by the temperature, is to make a very early start, in order to cross at least one or two things off the to-do list before it all becomes too much to contemplate.

Town is empty, and every day is Sunday. Shopping streets are shuttered - many of them for their entire length - and silent. 'Chiuso per Ferie' notices decorate the barred doors of restaurants, shops, and even the pharmacy opposite the end of Via San Francesco. The normal early morning stillness remains unbroken by the usual sounds of Pisa coming to life - apart from the occasional noise from a strimmer, in the hands of one of the few people who haven't departed for the coast or the mountains - and even the birds don't seem to make their usual clamour in the still heat of the day.

Early mornings, though, are magical. At this time of year we leave all the french windows wide open at night, to encourage whatever breath of night air there might be to infiltrate the house...and coming downstairs first thing in the morning is to be greeted by the freshness of the morning air, and a soft sunlight that permeates the garden as the rays first creep in over the top of the wall from the Palazzo Ruschi. The angle of the sun at that time throws unexpectedly intense shafts of sunlight into rooms which are normally entirely in the shade, and the Loggia, on the first floor is silently flooded with sunlight at seven in the morning...

It's too hot for formality, and so we graze over the course of the day - the fridge is well-supplied with prosciutto and salami and truckles of various kinds of pecorino - and lunchtime is identifiable only by the glasses of Kir which materialise sometime around one o'clock. As the sun goes down and the evening shadows lengthen, chilled prosecco is served, and eventually - by around 9.30 - it seems practical at last to think about supper...

Which is generally followed by a glass or so of grappa, sitting by candlelight on the terrace, and watching the brilliance of the moon as it moves inexorably across a cloudless night sky. En route to bed, the candles are blown out, but left where they are to be taken indoors again first thing in the morning. Da Capo...

Tonight's Supper:

Carpaccio of Veal, with rocket and parmesan

Baked Bream, with Anchovy sauce; Fennel, roast with Hazelnuts

Crêpes Suzette

Recipe: Crab Sauce for Pasta

There's a been a recent resurgence of fresh pasta in this household - yes, I know, all those carbohydrates....but making it is so satisfying, and the end-result is so delicious! Once you're practiced, the process of making, rolling and cutting fresh pasta is very quick - three minutes to make the pasta dough in a food processor, then 30 minutes to rest and perhaps a further 20 minutes to roll and cut enough pasta for five people (and add another 20 minutes if you're making a stuffed pasta, rather than merely making strips....last night we had cappelletti filled with a ricotta and parsley stuffing, which was ethereally light). One tip I would stress, though, is only ever to use italian "00" flour - the result in comparison with ordinary plain flour is enormous, and I see that "00" is now generally available in UK supermarkets, and not expensive

At the start of the week, lacking inspiration for that evening's menu I asked for suggestions, and the Technical Department immediately jumped in with a request for Fettuccine with Crab Sauce. Fair enough. Except I then couldn't actually find a recipe anywhere for it - I was surprised to discover that Marcella ignores Crab altogether!

So I made it up.

For Two*

*In fact, the quantity of pasta dough quoted here is sufficient for four or five people - but since the quantities don't efficiently pro-rata down, I always make this amount, and use half of it on one day and the remainder on the following day; it keeps perfectly well if wrapped in clingfilm and kept in the fridge for that time.

Ingredients: fresh pasta, made with 2 cups of "00" Flour, 3 medium Eggs, 1 teaspoon of Olive Oil, and a generous pinch of fine Salt (this recipe is fine for any of the 'flat' pasta shapes: fettuccine, tagliatelle, papardelle...); 1 dressed Crab; 1 oz Butter; 1 Salad Onion; 1 cup Double Cream; 1 tablespoon of Brandy; 1 small pot of lumpfish 'Caviar'.

Method:

1. While the water is coming to the boil for the pasta, finely dice the Onion and wilt it in the Butter in a small saucepan, over medium heat. Add the cream, a forkful of Crab, and the Brandy; stir and heat through.

2. As the water comes to the boil, add Salt and a dribble of Oil to the water, then cook the Pasta - it might take a minute, in all. As soon as it is done, drain the pasta into a colander, and tip the Cream sauce and the remaining Crab into the pasta pan. Stir quickly to mix it all together, taste and adjust the seasoning, then return the cooked pasta to the pan and stir to coat the pasta in the sauce.

3. Serve in heated bowls, and put a spoonful of Lumpfish Caviar on top of each serving - the combination is glorious!

"Ten Minutes to Table...."

....is the latest food-media silliness to appear on a computer screen somewhere near you. But, don't worry - I wouldn't rush...

Telegraph TV - a new one on me, too - has apparently just started a series of programmes based on cooking something (only one thing, though, or at most one course) entirely from scratch in the space of ten minutes. Having looked at it, I can't even work myself up into a rant over it - frankly, it's just too feeble an idea to warrant the effort - but I don't think it should be allowed to pass without comment. Not least because it so clearly 'borrows' from Dr Pomiane's splendid 'Cooking in Ten Minutes', but doesn't have the grace to acknowledge the fact.....even to the extent that it starts, as he did, by calling for water to be boiled before you do anything else, on the basis that it's sure to be relevant for something you're going to do!

The programme format is that Xanthe Clay - she of the daft idea that you should always serve at dinner whatever wine your guests have brought, however inappropriate it might be for the menu - spends 10 minutes once a week before the camera, cooking something within that space of time, under the jaundiced gaze of Loyd Grossman (he of the irritable vowel syndrome - and a claim to being one of the culinary great and good, the basis for which has always escaped me).

And the point of all of this is what, exactly?

When Pomiane was concentrating on Ten Minutes, he was specifically addressing the constraint of having only an hour for lunch, and the need within that time to be able to produce and consume 'proper' food, as well as to have time afterwards for coffee, a cigarette and a conversation - all before having to head off back to his lab. (Some readers have even deduced that his 'conversation' included slightly more than that, and his dedication of the book to 'Madame X, asking for ten minutes of her kind attention' was actually shorthand for more appetites being satisfied at lunchtime than the purely culinary...)

Anyway, my point is, he was talking about lunch, and the reality of a demanding timetable. Xanthe - bless her - is talking about the evening...and the whole thing is a nonsense. Why would you be restricted to 'Ten' minutes in the evening? If that really is all the time you have, then open a decent bottle of claret, and tuck into a meltingly wonderful vacherin and a packet of Bath Olivers! If, as is more likely, you have more time, then the ten minute parameter is irrelevant, and instead you should follow Pierre Franey and the sixty minute gourmet approach that he so intelligently pioneered in the New York Times back in the eighties. And if you do indeed have more time, but you don't want to spend more than ten minutes of it on the agonizingly unpleasant process of cooking, because you dislike the whole thing so much, then why not do all of us a favour - yourself included - and simply order in Pizza.

The premise for this TV programme is fatuous. If you are in the least bit interested in cooking and food, and aren't on your way out to the theatre or somewhere similar, then you won't begrudge the thirty or forty minutes needed to produce two perfectly cooked courses (three in this household, as the Technical Department is convinced that less then three courses for dinner heralds the beginnning of the end of civilisation as we know it). And why would you? A glass of something chilled on the go, and Radio 4 chuntering away in the background as you work - what better way to wind down at the end of a day in the office, and as the precursor to a perfectly civilised dinner? Leaving aside the bland dreariness of the one dish I saw featured on "Ten minutes to table" - trout fillets accompanied by buttered Cucumber, and some potatoes which had been smeared with bottled Horseradish sauce - Xanthe's approach has you rushing needlessly around like a headless chicken, with only part of dinner ready at the end of it.

Why???

If you don't enjoy cooking, then reducing it to ten minutes of sweaty, stress-filled hell won't endear the process to you any more than otherwise, and if you do enjoy it, then you'll be happy to devote a sensible amount of time to doing it. Truth be told, I suspect Xanthe's time constraint is more a reflection of the size of the budget they have for cameramen than anything to do with making dinner.

Anyway, on the basis that even silliness should be equal-opportunity, here's the link- but don't say I didn't warn you!

www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink


Tonight's Dinner:

Tomato and Blue Cheese Tarts (as an amuse gueule) - less than five minutes

Ravioli with Parsley & Ricotta Stuffing, in Cream Sauce. - approx twenty minutes, start to finish, with elapsed time.

Boned Chicked, roast with Dill & Lemon Butter; Potatoes roast with Sage & Rosemary. - approx twenty minutes, ditto.

Meringue nests, with Raspberries and Passion Fruit Cream, on Strawberry coulis. - approx twenty minutes, ditto.